In a fascinating interview held by CTV News, the acclaimed director gave his two cents regarding his forecast of the evolution of AI. According to James Cameron, a nuclear arms race is not an illogical option. AI fans and the rest of us- beware!

James Cameron talks about AI

CTV News has exclusively interviewed Jame Cameron regarding the (very bad) future side effects of AI. Just a few days we reported on the expansion of AI-generated imagery applications by top post-production software. We (and many others) have been demonstrating the disadvantages, risks, and concerns regarding AI on the content creation community, and artists. AI may kill artistry. And those AI image/video (very soon) generators can harm artists in terms of copyrights and inceptive, and thus negatively impact our industry. For reference see the SAG-AFTRA  (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) union strike, which is explained below. Anyway, here’re the highlights of what James Cameron said, in continuation to the thesis of Joe Russo. 

I warned you guys in 1984, and you didn’t listen. I think the weaponization of AI is the biggest danger. I think that we will get into the equivalent of a nuclear arms race with AI, and if we don’t build it, the other guys are for sure going to build it, and so then it’ll escalate. You could imagine an AI in a combat theatre, the whole thing just being fought by the computers at a speed humans can no longer intercede, and you have no ability to de-escalate.

James Cameron to CTV News

Cameron: “I warned you guys in 1984, and you didn’t listen”

“I absolutely share their concern,” Cameron said on the SAG-AFTRA strike. Furthermore, he added in detail about the destructive and devastating impact of AI technology: “I warned you guys in 1984, and you didn’t listen. I think the weaponization of AI is the biggest danger. I think that we will get into the equivalent of a nuclear arms race with AI, and if we don’t build it, the other guys are for sure going to build it, and so then it’ll escalate. You could imagine an AI in a combat theatre, the whole thing just being fought by the computers at a speed humans can no longer intercede, and you have no ability to de-escalate”.

AI and Hollywood

The use of AI and its need for regulation has also been a point of contention in the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strikes in the United States. About 160,000 actors and other media professionals as part of the SAG-AFTRA union are on strike, joining on the picket line the more than 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America, who have been on strike since early May. According to CTV News, the unions are arguing that performers need protection against their images and art being used by AI technology without their consent, and the writers say studios shouldn’t be allowed to replace them with AI to write scripts. We absolutely can justify these kinds of feelings, and hope, as we said before, that lawyers will step in even further. “If we don’t stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble,” SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher told reporters last week. “We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines”. Anyway, this is what Cameron says about it: “It’s never an issue of who wrote it, it’s a question of, is it a good story? I don’t personally believe that a disembodied mind that’s just regurgitating what other embodied minds have said — about the life that they’ve had, about love, about lying, about fear, about mortality — and just put it all together into a word salad and then regurgitate it … I don’t believe that have something that’s going to move an audience”.

If we don’t stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble. We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines.

SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher

Will AI win an Oscar for Best Screenplay?

Cameron ends the interview by saying: “Let’s wait 20 years, and if an AI wins an Oscar for Best Screenplay, I think we’ve got to take them seriously”. However, even now you can ask ChatGPT to write a script for a feature film. Try the next prompt: “Write the script for Top Gun Part III, and replace Tom Cruise with Brad Pitt”. And then add more focused keywords and concepts. Then you will get your script. Now imagine how it evolved in the next 5 years. Would you stop this progress? Do you agree with Cameron?